How Talent (or Lack Thereof) Can Lead to Systemic Business Failure

The legend, John Hollon, tore into United here at FOT earlier this week, accurately writing that culture problems are the core reason Satan ranks higher than United in popularity polls this week. John laid out a solid strategic analysis of where culture impacts service, and he mixed in his own personal experiences. Good stuff…read it if you haven’t.

Oscar Munoz, United Continental Holdings Inc.’s embattled chief executive, said in a televised interview Wednesday that he is “ashamed” of his company’s treatment of a paying passenger dragged off a plane Sunday evening by law-enforcement officials called by United agents. …He blamed a “system failure” for the incident, which has dented the carrier’s stock price and led to calls for boycotts. “We have not provided our front-line supervisors and managers…with the proper tools, policies and procedures that allow them to use their common sense,” Munoz said.

It’s interesting to look at where talent led to the systemic failure. Munoz is right—a lot of things went wrong to let this happen. I wanted to break down where the talent let down the shareholders.

Gate agent – Pretty sure this person is kicking themselves for not escalating this deal. This seems like a tailor-made chance to let the boss earn their money. If you’re the person in charge of a situation you’ve never seen before, with 130 cameras ready to record, punt the ball.

The boss – Poor communication to the gate agent about when to escalate matters. If you’re a boss who’s given a gate agent limited decision-making authority (apparently)—that means you have to be there when it hits the fan.

United decision making authority – At some time, it appears the gate staff offered as much money as they could, then called the KGB thugs. Man, they could have offered someone 10k to get off that flight, and that sure seems like a bargain now. Push that decision down as close to the customer as you can.

Pilots and flight crew – We hear often that Captains run planes and everything that happens on it is their responsibility. This feels like someone sat in the cockpit and said, “Whew, glad I’m not in charge of that hot mess back in Coach.” Cooler heads could have helped this deal

CEO of United – Oscar Munoz, respected by many before this event for his leadership, flat out stepped in it with a bad apology. Leaders can benefit by stepping up when a crisis arises. He blew it.

This wasn’t an engineering, technical or structural failure—i.e., something breaking. This was a case of individual people making bad decisions. That’s a talent issue. If I am Munoz today, I want to look at every aspect of this operation. How did these people get hired, trained, managed and led? That’s where the failure was.

FOT Note: This rant is brought to you by the good folks at OutMatch who like us enough to be an annual sponsor at FOT for all content in our Talent Selection and Employee Development track (and don’t expect that we run any of this by them ahead of time).